Cops: Queens, Long Island pellet-gun shootings possibly linked

Tiara Ferebee, 24, leaves a Queens police precinct Sunday, Oct. 16, 2016. She was charged in connection with the pellet-gun shooting of an NYPD cop. Investigators are trying to determine if it's related to four Long Island shootings.
Photo Credit: James Carbone

State Police said they are trying to determine if a Riverhead woman charged in the Wednesday pellet-gun shooting of a plainclothes NYPD detective in Queens is connected to four similar incidents later that night on Long Island.

Tiara Ferebee, 24, of Andrea Court, was ordered jailed on $1 million bond or $500,000 cash bail at her arraignment Sunday night in Queens Criminal Court. She is charged with first-degree attempted assault, second-degree assault and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said.

The NYPD said that just after 5 p.m. Wednesday, a projectile fired from a pellet gun inside a brown, 2015 Nissan Altima, struck the detective in the forehead as he drove an unmarked police vehicle west on Jamaica Avenue at 168th Street, in Jamaica, Queens.

Court papers identified the detective as Adam Jangel.

The Altima was heading east on Jamaica Avenue and had a Missouri license plate, police said. Jangel was taken to Jamaica Medical Center. He was not seriously injured, authorities said.

Officers arrested Ferebee on Saturday after the circulation of surveillance photos the NYPD said showed her in the Altima at the time of the shooting.

About an hour after the shooting, a projectile struck a vehicle heading east on the Southern State Parkway near Exit 30 in Nassau County, State Police said Monday. About 7 p.m. Wednesday, two eastbound vehicles traveling east of Exit 61 on Sunrise Highway in Southampton “were struck by projectiles fired from a brown Nissan Altima, shattering the side view windows,” State Police said.

NYPD released this surveillance image of Tiara Ferebee, 24, of Riverhead, who has been charged with attempted murder and other offenses in the shooting of an NYPD officer in the head with a pellet gun on Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2016, police said. Photo Credit: NYPD

On that same night, State Police said a projectile hit a vehicle’s side window on County Route 104 near Sunrise Highway.

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“All four incidents are believed to be related,” a State Police news release said. “Due to the similarities between the NYPD’s investigation into a pellet gun incident in Queens and the incidents in both Suffolk and Nassau counties, the State Police and the NYPD have been working in close cooperation to resolve these cases.”

At Ferebee’s arraignment, her defenese attorney, David Blondell, told Judge Gia Morris no evidence existed linking his client to the shooting of the officer, other than her alleged proximity, and no weapon was recovered.

Prosecutor Sonia Kaczmarzyk said video connects the Altima to the shooting.

A criminal complaint filed in Queens Criminal Court included statements investigators said Ferebee made after her arrest as well as additional details about the officer’s injury.

Jangel “has a foreign metal projectile lodged in his forehead, lodged between his skin and his skull,” NYPD Officer Joseph Zvonik wrote in the complaint, which quotes Ferebee saying she remembered little about the shooting or anything else that day.